Of the 146 houses that have so far been earmarked for demolition following a large wildfire that swept through northeastern Attica last week, 80% had not cleared their plots of combustible materials, government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said on Wednesday.

In the remaining 20% of the cases the properties were cleaned and the damage was much more limited, he added.

The statement follows a presentation by Digital Governance Minister Dimitris Papastergiou on Tuesday where he juxtaposed data from the online platform where urban landowners had to declare that they had cleared their land and the information collected so far by inspectors assessing the damage to houses and businesses. 

“[In areas] where we had declarations of cleared plots in many cases the fire stopped at the borders of those plots, while it continued in areas we did not have declarations,” Papastergiou said at Tuesday’s meeting called to discuss the aftermath of the blaze.

An example is the settlement of Dioni in the municipality of Rafina-Pikermi, where 300 cleaning declarations had been submitted. The flames passed through part of the settlement without causing any significant damage to buildings, Papastergiou said.